Powered by a hardware-accelerated transcoding engine, DS216+II allows you to transcode H.264 4K videos to 1080p and stream them to high-definition TVs, digital media players, mobile handsets, and computers in the required format, making it easy to watch videos without having to install a 3rd party player.

Overall, set up was easy, I’m not a novice but not a super expert. There were guides and menus along the way to help folks new to setting up a NAS and the Synology boards are very active for research.

I’ll add an update later if I have anything significant regarding performance or experience, but so far it does what it says and am happy with the unit.

So sweet. I upgraded from a 411j. Used for Video-Photo-back-up etc. The setup really couldn’t be easier. I love the quickconnectid which alleviates the need to port forward for the most part.

Menus and artwork loaded way faster on the client side. At this point, I decided it should index not only my movies and TV shows, but also my home videos, photos and music.

I also was able to watch movies from it from my mobile phone at work. It was easily trans-coding on the fly movies done in 1080p. I need to test with 4K next.

Slow as molasses. I'm not sure if I'm criticizing the unit or Synology's customer support. I purchased the DS718+ and set up a share which I mounted on a Mac through GigE. It went exceedingly smooth.

Unless you have an application that can tolerate transfers at that rate, look at another solution.

Synology DS218+ 2 bay NAS DiskStation (Diskless)

I have always been a fan of Synology. I had their DS211j since 2012. At the time, it did everything that I needed. However, today there are more things I require from a NAS and I found the DS218+ to be the savior.

Prior to purchasing the DS218+, I had built my own NAS from parts and open source software. While my home-built system was adequate, it wasn't all that user-friendly. The DS218+ was a huge step up even though I'm not taking advantage of all the different applications that are available for it.

I mostly use it as shared file storage and as the destination for backing up various computers on the LAN. I now use my home-built NAS as the destination for backing up the DS218+

This unit does not have enough power to transcode in PLEX.
Example I have Pan's Labyrinth ripped from a bluRay when I try to add subtitles (flick is in Spanish) the NAS CPU cannot keep up trying to superimpose the subtitles.

Lots of good things to say. It loses a star because the main reason I bought this was to administer backups, and that's the hardest thing to do on this sucker.

It loses one star because it took a good bit of internet searching to figure out how to set up custom backups correctly.

You'll be prompted to create an account and install DiskStation Manager. SO, after you order, go ahead and download your PDFs and the DS Manager from Synology and have it ready to go.

The admin website interface is a very nice desktop OS like navigation. You can install apps from Package Center, there is a Control Panel and a File Navigator inside the ‘shell’ to start you off. But first you’ll go to Storage Manager to set up your drives.

Right now you need to install the Plex app manually, which is easy. You download the Synology package from the Plex website, Intel - 64-bit (DSM +6.0), and then select manual install in the package manager on Synology and choose the package you downloaded.

It's black, as opposed to my white DS211j.

I had to manually setup the Connect.to and dynamic DNS again to point to this new box, but recognized that I had a new box and removed the old one from the record. YMMV, but very straightforward.

I had to re-install Plex because the version I had was old, unsupported and worked only with ARM CPUs. It re-used my existing database and it was many, many times faster.

Synology DS218+ 2 bay NAS DiskStation (Diskless)

There are a few bits of info you need to track down to make it work, in general and with Plex, but it works.

I mainly stream 480p content and have never experienced any problems with transcoding to Roku.

The Hyper Backup application does a nice job of interfacing with a Linux-based NAS, while File Station and Cloud Station satisfy my file sharing needs.

Syslog server is great. Really handy if your router or firewall can send logs. This way I can monitor my logs graphically. You can easily see when hackers are trying to access your network if you have ports open

I believe the official Plex site claims no support for this specific model, and Plex is not listed in the official Synology apps, but if you "manually" install Plex it seems to work with no problems.

To start off out of the box the L2TP VPN never worked. I figured I was doing something wrong and shrugged it off for a while but revisiting it months later the VPN STILL doesn't work despite trying everything including emails to synology support.

I pulled the drives out of the 216+II and put them straight into the 218+ and it fired right into a migration tool. No data or user account loss.

Their migration instructions and tools were great. I was able to migrate 2 x 2TB hard drives to the new NAS with ease. I think I spent more time doing backups than migrating. Everything was working after migration.

Faster hardware encryption as I need this for encrypting my important documents (I have a paperless office thing going).

This is a powerful little box that does just about everything you could ever need.

My one gripe is the loss of a USB port vs prior model. With power supply monitor and USB backup you’re already out.
As mentioned, it’s hard to beat DSM and that’s what really shines for me.

Synology DS218+ 2 bay NAS DiskStation (Diskless)

I've had this NAS for a few weeks now and I can say that it is everything I was looking for. It is incredibly powerful yet it has a simple and easy to use web interface.

Don't be fooled by it's simplicity though. The advanced user will be pleased with all of the options that can be tweaked.